Quinnipiac: Romney has momentum in Ohio

According to a Quinnipiac poll released this morning,  Mitt Romney has erased a 10 point deficit from a February 27 poll and now leads Rick Santorum by 3 points in the Ohio GOP presidential primary which will take place tomorrow.

The polls margin of error is +/- 3.6%

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Report: Young boys bound and gagged by janitors in Long Branch School

Four boys under the age of 10 were bound, gagged and photographed in the bathroom of a Long Branch elementary school, according to report posted yesterday on Long Branch Patch.  Patch credited The Link News with breaking the story on its facebook page.

Two Gregory Elementary School janitors were suspended with pay. An Asbury Park Press report posted this morning says the suspensions are with pay.

In a statement quoted by Long Branch Patch, Long Branch Schools Superintendent Michael Salvatore said that the acts are claimed to have been made without malice and in jest.  Salvatore contacted the authorities and safeguards have been taken.

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Governor Christie Press Conference

Governor Chris Christie has a press conference scheduled for 11:30 this morning.

Watch it live here:

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imaksim.com

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Is Santorum Electable?

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MMM Year In Review – January

Tony Fiore was sworn in as Mayor of Middletown.  Shaun Golden was sworn in as Monmouth County Sheriff.  Tom Arnone was sworn in to his first term as Freeholder.  Rob Clifton took the Freeholder Oath of Office for the third time.

Despite the hullabaloo New Jersey’s mainstream media and the Democrats made of Governor Christie and Lt. Governor Guadagno being on vacation at the same time during the December 2010 blizzard, Governor Christie’s approval ratings were very strong, 53% favorable, in the first FDU poll of the year.

A severely mentally ill 22 year old man, Jared Loughner, opened fire on a crowd in Tucson, Arizonia.   He killed 6 and injured 14, including Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.  The national mainstream media and Democrats in Congress blamed the massacre on the Tea Party and Sarah Palin.    President Obama was presidential in calming the rhetoric and healing the nation.

Fair Haven Mayor Mike Halfacre used the digital pages of MoreMonmouthMusings to knock the wheels off a bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker that would have required New Jersey residents register their bicycles with MVC at a cost of $10 per bike, per year.

At a meeting of the Highlands Republican Club, former Mayor Anna Little declared the New Jersey Supreme Court is unconstitutional.   The the club banned MMM blogger Art Gallagher for reporting what Little said. 

Governor Christie held a Town Hall meeting in Middletown.  During the meeting Christie criticized President Obama’s leadership, a theme that became a staple for Christie throughout the year, causing a draft Christie for President movement among  GOP leaders and donors nationally.

triCityNews publisher Dan Jacobson put MMM blogger Art Gallagher on the front page of his paper.

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1 in a million

The 1,000,000th page load on MMM occurred at 3:19:59 PM.

Fittingly, the 1,000,000th hit was from a regular reader, a Comcast subsciber with a Philadelphia IP address and hundreds of recorded visits.  The hit was on the Milestone post.

There was confetti, balloons and fireworks at MMM world headquarters.

The lucky reader wins a lifetime subscription to MMM and an opportunity to meet presidential candidate Buddy Roemer on Saturday afternoon at the Bayshore Tea Party Group’s office in Middletown.

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Milestone

Sometime this afternoon MMM will have registered it’s 1,000,000th page load from over 665,000 visitors since we started keeping track on December 31, 2006.  This is a combination of the old site, moremonmouthmusings.blogspot.com and this domain.  Statistics weren’t kept in 2006 because I didn’t know how and I didn’t imagine that my writing would attract a following.

34% of this traffic has arrived on this domain since September of 2010 when we moved here.  70% of MMM’s visitors are repeat users and spend more than two minutes on the site per visit.

Thank you for making MMM part of your routine.  Thank you to the many commenters and contributors who make the site as informative and entertaining as it is.

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Ed from Tent City

By Art Gallagher

The news this morning about the barbeque that the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Knights of Columbus at St. Mary at the Lake Church provided for the homeless people living at the Tent City in Lakewood yesterday reminded me of the first friend I made during my three week stay at the Monmouth County Correctional Institution.

Tent City has been in the news lately as the Lakewood and Ocean County governments are seeking to shut it down, and homeless advocates are seeking to compel those governments to provide shelter to the homeless.

Tent City would be a fascinating case study and debate of the role of big government in addressing social problems.  Minister Steve Brigham, a high voltage electrical contractor, started the camp some six years ago on publicly owned land.  He never asked anything of the government, including permission.  He just started the camp to help people.  Over time it grew. 

Now, six years later there are suits and counter suits, media coverage and spin which will inevitably lead to more government and less freedom for the homeless and the taxpayers who will end up supporting them.

Robert Johnson of Businessinsider wrote an excellent piece about Tent City, including a photo essay , if you would like to learn more about it.

About Ed

My friend Ed has gotten a headstart over his community members in receiving taxpayer funded food and shelter against his will.

Ed was brought into the Monmouth County Correctional Institution an hour or so after I was on Saturday morning October 15.  While sitting in a holding cell wondering what was going to happen next, I couldn’t help but notice Ed come in.  His white hair, orange T-shirt and ripped blue jeans stood out in the parade of men being brought into to the jail by police officers from throughout the county.

I could hear Ed being interviewed by the corrections officer and the nurse who were processing the parade.  He was born in 1936.  75 years old.  He looked older than my father who will be 80 next month.

I must have lead the parade that morning.  I was the only one in the holding cell when the corrections officer and nurse finished processing me.  As others arrived, they immediately started talking.  Pleading their cases.  Why they shouldn’t be there.  How the police had violated their rights, etc.  For the most part I just listened.  By the time Ed was brought into the cell there will several of us there.  The other men were pleading their cases to each other.  Ed sat next to me and started his pleading.

He was arrested in his tent earlier that morning on a child support warrant!  I wouldn’t have guessed that.  His bail was set at some $42,000, the amount of his past due child support.  “I’m going to be here for three years,” Ed exclaimed.

Over the next few hours Ed told me about his life in Tent City.  He would start every day before dawn by bicycling to grocery stores in Lakewood where he had befriended employees who would give him food to bring back to the camp for himself and other residents. He managed to get a copy of the New York Post everyday. He told me about the chickens and his friends, the other residents of the camp.

He wondered if he would be able to get in touch with his sister and if she would bail him out.  How much money would he need to get out?  He wanted out.  Would a judge let him pay off his child support debt at the rate of $100 per month?  He receives $140 per month in general assistance, he said.   He could manage on $40.   I didn’t have it in my heart to point out to him that at $100 per month it would take 35 years to pay off the $42,000 he owed to the mother of his child.  If it was going to take $42,000 for Ed to get out of jail, he may have just received a life sentence.

A few hours later Ed and I were both transferred from the holding area to A-1, one of two pods where most all inmates go to be classified before they are moved to other pods in the jail.  For the rest of the weekend I got to know Ed a bit.  He was a career horse trainer.  He was a big fan of the San Francisco Forty Niners.  The Forty Niners had a big game against the Detroit Lions that he was looking forward to watching on Sunday.  Ed couldn’t see very well.  He had glasses but usually didn’t wear them.  He was always squinting.

On Monday I was transferred out of A-1 and lost track of Ed for most of the next three weeks.  As others from A-1 came into the worker pod where I had been transferred, I asked about him.  I also asked about him while at medical and was waiting with other inmates from throughout the jail to see a doctor or nurse. No one recognised him by my description.   Maybe he somehow managed to get out.  Maybe a judge or other authority realized the futility of incarcerating him.

The day before my release I was walking to visitation and saw Ed.  He was in a dormitory type pod without cells that was mostly used to house illegal immigrants who were waiting to be deported.   He didn’t look happy.  I couldn’t get his attention.  On my way back from visitation I waved to Ed who was squinting in my direction.  He waved back.  I couldn’t tell if he recognized me or remembered me. 

He didn’t look happy, even though he had shelter and was in a safe place, getting three meals a day and free medical care.

I don’t know what will become of Ed.  It seems as though he will spend the rest of his life in jail and that the mother of his child will never see her $42,000.

There ought to be a better way.

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Is New Jersey the next Delaware?

By Art Gallagher

Is New Jersey the next Delaware?   That’s the question Politickernj raised earlier this week regarding the 2012 U.S. Senate race in NJ.  Politckernj is wondering if the 2012 U.S. Senate race in New Jersey will be similar to the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Delaware.

The short answer to that question is no. An incumbent was not running in Delaware in 2010. 2012 is a presidential year. 2012 will not be a repeat of 2010.  New Jersey is not Delaware.  More on that later.

As you might imagine, I have a unique perspective about the differences between New Jersey and Delaware, which is not related to electoral politics.  If you’re a reader of this site or The Asbury Park Press, you’re probably aware that I was arrested in my home in Highlands after 10PM on Friday October 14 on a fugitive warrant out of Delaware.  I’ve been charged with two felony counts of theft over $100,000 and two misdemeanor counts of forgery.  The charges will not be further discussed on this site, other than to say that I am confident of a favorable outcome.

The real reason I was arrested on a fugitive warrant is that the Delaware attorney I had engaged to arrange my surrender in Delaware failed to communicate with the investigating detective in a timely manner.   I have a different attorney now.

3 hours vs. 3 weeks

So far the biggest difference between my experiences in New Jersey and Delaware is time.  I arrived, as scheduled, to surrender in Delaware this Wednesday at 11am and was on my way home by 2PM.   As in Monmouth County, most of that time was spent waiting. 

I wasn’t handcuffed, patted down or locked up in Delaware.  The actual processing, (being photographed, finger printed and signing some papers) took about 10 minutes.   Then my attorney and I hung out until the fugitive warrant was removed from the system. We waited for a Justice of the Peace to finish his lunch and to appear via video for my bail hearing. The video bail hearing took less than five minutes.  My bail was set at $12,000.

Technically, I was detained until my family members posted my bail.  But I wasn’t really detained.  My attorney and I waited in the lobby of the police station for the bail to be posted.  I was even allowed to step outside of the building for a smoke, twice.

After about 40 minutes, I signed the bail receipt and was released from my detention in the lobby.  It took about a ½ hour to meet up with my family members who had posted my bail.   The clock in the car read 1:46 and we were on our way home.

That entire experience is very different than what I experienced in New Jersey.

At about 10PM on Friday October 14 I was arrested at my home in Highlands.  I was frisked and handcuffed.

At the Highlands police station I asked to call an attorney.  “We’re not questioning you.  We’ll let you call your attorney when we know what you can tell him,” was the reply.   I was photographed by the arresting officer twice.   My belt, shoes, cash, wallet and blackberry were confiscated and I was put into a cell.

A few hours later a sergeant came into the holding area to tell me what was going on.  A Monmouth County judge had set my bail at $250,000 with no 10% option.  “But there’s really no bail,” he said, “even if you post the $250,000 the fugitive warrant is still in place and you’ll be arrested again.”   “Your wife called, we’ll let you call her back in the morning before we transfer you to the county jail.”  “What are the charges?” I asked.  “Some kind of theft,” was his answer.

I managed to get some sleep on the thin plastic mattress and with the lights on.  In the morning an officer sat with me while I called my wife from a police station line that was being recorded.  I was given access to my blackberry to read her phone numbers for my attorney, family members and friends that she should call. I sent a text to my attorney.

Then I was transferred to the Monmouth County Correctional Institution where I spent the next three weeks.

$12,000 vs. $250,000 or $150,000

Why my bail was set so high in Monmouth County compared to the bail required in Delaware (where I am not a resident and have no ties to the community) remains a mystery to me.

At my bail reduction hearing in Monmouth County, which occurred after I had already been incarcerated for almost two weeks, the judge who reduced my bail to $150,000 with no 10% option said that such bail would be appropriate for like charges levied in New Jersey. 

The Asbury Park Press reported this morning that a former attorney was arrested for stealing over $200,000 from a client.  Those charges are somewhat similar to those levied against me. The former attorney’s bail was set at $35,000.

On November 1, The Asbury Park Press reported that a Wall Township attorney and her paralegal were indicted after a three year long investigation for stealing $800,000 from wards whose interests they were assigned to protect.  The attorney and the paralegal were each released on $75,000 bail.

In comparison, my bail in Monmouth County seems like an injustice and I realize that I sound like I am complaining.  That is not my intention. It is a mystery.

This experience has been incredibly difficult for me, perhaps more so for those who love me.  It has been life altering, yet I have faith that in the long run it will be for the good.

Over the next few days or weeks I’ll be writing more about my experience and some of the other differences I have noticed between New Jersey and Delaware.  

I’ll get back to writing about the political happenings in Monmouth, the State and the Nation. I’ll be writing about some of the things I missed while was away.  I may write about topics other than politics too. 

I won’t be writing about the charges against me.  Comments about the charges will be removed and those commenters blocked.  There are other sites that will accommodate my naysayers.

I am happy to be back. 

I am extremely grateful to the many, many people who have supported me throughout this ordeal and to those who have been supportive since my release two weeks ago.   In times of crisis like the one I have faced, you quickly learn who your friends are.

I am grateful to, and for, my friends and family.

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